A marvelous new essay collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of\u00a0<\/b>Somebody’s Fool<\/i><\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/b>The Destiny Thief<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Life and Art<\/i>\u2014these are the twin subjects considered in Richard Russo\u2019s twelve masterful new essays\u2014how they inform each other and how the stories we tell ourselves about both shape our understanding of the world around us. In \u201cThe Lives of Others,\u201d he reflects on the implacable fact that writers use people, insisting that what matters, in the end, is how and for what purpose. How do you bridge the gap between what you know and what you don\u2019t, and sometimes can\u2019t, know? Why tell a story in the first place? What we don\u2019t understand, Russo opines, is in fact the very thing that beckons to us. In \u201cStiff Neck,\u201d he writes of the exasperating fault lines exposed within his own family as his wife\u2019s sister and her husband\u2014proudly unvaccinated\u2014develop COVID. In \u201cTriage,\u201d he details with heartbreaking vividness the terror of seeing his seven-year-old grandson in critical condition. And in \u201cGhosts,\u201d he revisits Gloversville, the town that gave rise to the now-legendary fictional town of North Bath, and confronts the specter of its richly populated past and its ghostly present.<\/p>\n
Sharp, tender, extraordinarily intimate reflections on work, culture, love, and family from one of the great writers of our time.<\/p>\n